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Aaronson, Trevor. The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism. New York: Ig Publishing, 2013. 272 pp. $24.95.
Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson, who worked on part of this book at the Berkeley journalism school, explains early in The Terror Factory how it came about: "For years, ... I couldn't help but notice how the U.S. government was putting forward to the public people who seemed to have become terrorists only as a result of the prodding and inducements of FBI informants and undercover agents." He noted that many defendants seemed to be people with little ability to do any harm. The FBI, however, seemed to provide the imagination and the opportunities for horrid acts.
Aaronson's book is about one such case after another, involving lying, even criminal, informants; unethical FBI agents; juries who apparently are always willing to convict the mentally ill, the mentally disabled, or the just plain dumb, who have been entrapped by the FBI;...